sweet tongs

Now I don’t wax poetic about much music around here, so I figured I’d let you guys in on someone who’s blowing warm kisses over my eardrums these days. Nico Muhly is a contemporary minimalist composer who’s just released a new album, Mothertongue. Its pretty unusual in the sense that it mixes traditional folk-songs and some genuinely eerie/transcendent vocals into classical structures. The effect is visceral and had me putting the whole thing on repeat on my mp3 player. The final three-part riff on an old folk tale about two sisters sent that characterstic shiver down my spine, and will haunt you long after the sustained last note has faded away.

I tried uploading the mp3’s, but wordpress won’t allow that, so I’ve renamed the file extensions to jpgs. You’ve got to rename the file extensions to mp3 before playing them.

1. Mothertongue I – Archive

2. The Only Tune – Part I

3. The Only Tune – Part II

RAW

I have nothing against vegetarians. They’re an OK bunch in my book, and some of them smell pretty good. But what I do loathe are self-righteous bigots who go out of their way to make sure I know that my status as an omnivore is equivalent to that of a baby raping cannibal. I met one of these virulent zealots at a Pedestrian Sunday at Kensington, and I had the foresight to leave before I demonstrated how much sharper my canines were than his. But anyway, I came across these videos through a post on the now-famous blog Stuff White People Like on how much white people like Veganism and Vegetarianism and I had to share it.

Part I:

Part II:

Part III:

And about that blog – Stuff White People Like – I was listening to a reading by Christian Lander, the creator, where he says that one of the underlying ideas behind the site was that of competition, about how much the social strata is created now not by wealth or class, but by taste and aesthetics. You can effectively be poor and socially upscale at the same time if you espouse the right political views (ultra-liberal or libertine), the right socio-economic policies (progressive, eco-conscious, grass-roots initiatives), the right language (racially aware, appropriation-free) and of course, the right clothes, shoes, scarves, belts, music-tastes, film-makers and so on. Of course, on some level we are all aware of this, but one of the reasons the site became so popular was that it – humorously – pointed out that these systems of thought were just that – systems. They were not the only way of thinking but simply represented the new ideological elite. They are ‘reality tunnels’ as well, closed realms of thinking that seek to justify only their contents. It’s good to be aware of this as you’re talking about how awesome the food is at the farmer’s market close to your home…

I like farmer’s markets. The green-beans are unbeatable.

There is really nothing. But that nothing is really something. I whistled at nothing while it was crossing the street, and nothing gave me this glare like I was something else, like I was nothing. After that, I couldn’t stop thinking about nothing. Nothing consumed my thoughts, ate my bread and drank all my apple juice. Sometimes I can’t sleep and imagine nothing beneath the cracks in the hardwood floor, moving about like there was something. I think about nothing pretending to be something for awhile, and it usually ends up giving me a headache, so I have to walk downstairs to find something. But there’s just nothing. Now everytime someone asks me about something, I just say nothing.

It’s hard, living like this.

Be Ass

Media bias is nothing new, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t piss me off whenever I happen to see through the smoke-screens into the seedy underbelly of global politics. The ‘recent’ Georgia-South Ossetia conflict happens to fall into this category. For a week now we in the west, cuddled under the black umbrella of Western media sources, have been subjected to reports that vilify the Russians as the villainous invaders. Only recently (and that only on the BBC, the lesser evils of the media giants) have reports been coming in of what the Russians are actually doing in Ossetia – dangerous things like repairing water mains and building shelters. Apart from all of this, it is important to know that South Ossetia considers itself a autonomous nation, while the rest of the world doesn’t. Georgia first declared independence in 1992, but the referendum was not recognized by the UN, EU, or the OSCE. Then there was a second referendum in August of 2006, where 99% of the population voted for independence, and the voter turn-out was 95%. Take that Canadian voters! But even this referendum wasn’t recognized by anybody, and South-Ossetia is still ‘officially’ recognized as part of Georgia.

Needless to say, there are many parties within South-Ossetia that are fighting, both politically and militarily, for a true sovereign nation. This is how the most recent conflict began – when Georgian forces accused the South-Ossetian independence forces of firing at them (even though those accusations were vehemently denied) and sent troops into the region and shelling the shit out of it, as irate countries are wont to do these days. 12 Russian peace-keepers in the region were killed. Russia then declared that this simply won’t do dammit, and sent their troops in to kick some Georgian ass.

All this is pretty normal when it comes to the fucked-up wonderland of world affairs, but as is often the case, the media are the ones who piss me off most. How many times have we been forced to watch a sad and ‘morally injured’ Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili lament about how the Russian troops are invading ‘his’ borders? How many news reports focus on the rage of the Georgian people put off by the fact that they can’t bully around their Northern neighbors anymore? The whole international community, the US included, puts the blame squarely on Russia – Bush even sent in a few jets down there to wave their cocks around.

Be Ass. BS. Bull Shit. Bias.

Take a look at this video:

“Oh shit – she be talkin’ ’bout them Reds like they was good! Shut the bitch down!”

And here’s a relatively good newscast on a little bit of recent Georgian history:

There’s a “George W. Bush Avenue” in Georgia? No wonder America is so quick to rally to their side…

People, can we please see through all of this crap to some measure of truth? Do we really need our newscasters telling us who to hate and who to love? God forbid we are ever left to our own devices and make some – gasp! – decisions of our own.

Oh, and can we please get Al Jazeera on basic cable? Please?

co-tented plate

Then said Almitra, Speak to us of Love.

And he raised his head and looked upon

the people, and there fell a stillness upon

them. And with a great voice he said:

When love beckons to you, follow him,

Though his ways are hard and steep.

And when his wings enfold you yield to

him,

Though the sword hidden among his

pinions may wound you.

And when he speaks to you believe in

him,

Though his voice may shatter your dreams

as the north wind lays waste to the garden.

.

For even as love crowns you so shall he

crucify you. Even as he is for your growth

so is he for your pruning.

Even as he ascends to your height and

caresses your tenderest branches that quiver

in the sun,

So shall he descend to your roots and

shake them in their clinging to the earth.

.

Like sheaves of corn he gathers you unto

himself.

He threshes you to make you naked.

He sifts you to free you from your husks.

He grinds you to whiteness.

He kneads you until you are pliant;

And then he assigns you to his sacred

fire, that you may become sacred bread for

God’s sacred feast.

.

All these things shall love do unto you

that you may know the secrets of your

heart, and in that knowledge become a

fragment of Life’s heart.

.

But if in your fear you would seek only

love’s peace and love’s pleasure,

Then it is better for you that you cover

your nakedness and pass out of love’s

threshing floor,

Into the seansonless world where you

shall laugh, but not all of your laughter,

and weep, but not all of your tears.

.

- Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

A Red Turn

It has been awhile. I pondered long and hard (which is to say I was in a state of prolonged excitement) over whether I should abandon this blog to the musty mothballs of the silicone wastelands, or revive it with the sudden kiss of a terribly lost, hopelessly haggard, and entirely unattractive future potentate. Needless to say that Grimm visage prevailed, and here I am once more, ready to kick ass, take names, and chew bubblegum.

As some of you might be aware, I only recently got back from an extended visit to my homeland, Sri Lanka. The trip and its various implications I will not speak of here, for the sake of brevity, but if you see me face to face then we can discuss it over a tankard or two of good lager.

I will say one thing about that journey. It has cemented my core in ways I, in all my prior extrapolations, could not have fathomed. I realize now that I am a Sri Lankan first, then a Canadian. I lived there for most of my life. Sixteen years. Going back was like slipping into a still-warm blanket beside an always-warm lover after making some morning coffee. I felt at ease there, no matter if I was navigating the barely organized chaos of Colombo or Kandy, or trekking the remote foothills of a tiny village. I am more comfortable in this skin. I am stronger.

…

And in more local matters, Stephanie Posavec has created some of the most arresting textual visualizations I have ever seen. Her primary source is Jack Kerouac’s seminal beat classic/manifesto, ‘On The Road’. But she also dissects Faulkner’s ‘Intruder in the Dust’, and Orwell’s ‘1984′. She has painstakingly analyzed every single word in the book and created mathematically precise renderings of recurring lingual patterns. The results seem like flowcharts to some yet-to-be-conceived Quantum computer, and brings up some very interesting issues in regards to experiencing textual information. What is it to ‘read’ a book? What kind of an experience could we have if we could somehow bypass the words themselves, delve into our other senses? Is the essence of a book (if there is some such unchanging quality – Barthes would vehemently disagree) in the words themselves, or elsewhere, in some meta-pattern churned out in an immense, invisible loom? Looking at what Posavec has created, especially her “Sentence Drawings” series, where her deconstruction of sentence-structures into simple colour-coded line drawings transforms the text into precise spatial dimensions, I can come to a very clear understanding of the character of the book. We can begin to talk about the text as we would looking at a particularly revealing photograph of a person: “On The Road” is flighty, irreverent, intense, drunk, undisciplined, and honest. ‘1984′, meanwhile, is logical, cold, meticulous, completist, harsh, structured, and a somewhat hopeless. Posavec has created a personal labyrinth for the text, placing the viewer into it as an experimenter would a mouse. What is startling is that these constructions are ultimately linear, but when viewed as a whole, come off as organic and simultaneous. Check it out.

…

It has occurred to me that I should probably be a bit more consistent in my updates to this blog. So I shall try to make at least one post a week from now on. That might change when I’m in the thick of academia, but till then, you can expect a regular dose of the not-so-random.